53 pages • 1 hour read
April HenryThe Night She Disappeared
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 33-40Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 33 Summary: “The Ninth Day: Gabie”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes description of death by suicide.
After school, Kayla’s mother calls Gabie and asks her to come to the Cutler home with Drew. Gabie is dubious, but she agrees. Drew refuses to be picked up at his house but agrees to meet Gabie at a nearby street corner. He tells her that his mom was released from jail pending trial but will almost certainly be found guilty because there is CCTV footage of her stealing. Gabie wonders if Drew hates her for being well-off.
At the Cutlers’ home, Gabie and Drew meet Kayla’s parents and older brother, Kyle. Kyle asks accusatorily why they waited to go to the police about Cody Renfrew. The family believes that Cody took Kayla but knows that the police can’t arrest him without evidence. The DNA lab will take days to return results from the search of Cody’s house, so they have hired a psychic, Elizabeth Lamb, to help. Lamb is a well-known TV psychic. Gabie recalls how she once made a semi-correct prediction about the whereabouts of a missing girl.
Elizabeth Lamb asks Gabie and Drew to imagine Kayla sitting in the room with them. She begins to speak from the perspective of Kayla, describing a scene involving details that are already known to the public—darkness, a man with a heavy object in his hand, and the back seat of a car. Gabie suddenly sees Kayla standing before her, with filthy hair and sad eyes, mouthing words Gabie can’t understand. Elizabeth Lamb describes the sensation of being still and underwater, implying that Kayla is dead. Gabie shouts that Elizabeth is wrong—she knows now more than ever that Kayla is still alive.
This chapter ends with a scan of a missing-persons poster. It shows a picture of Kayla and lists various details about her physical appearance and the circumstances of her disappearance. There is a $12,000 reward for information leading to her discovery.
Chapter 34 Summary: “The Ninth Day: Drew”
Drew watches as Elizabeth backs away from Gabie’s intense gaze, almost tripping over a coffee table. Mrs. Cutler stares at the two as if she doesn’t know whom to believe. Elizabeth says that her psychic link to Kayla was broken by Gabie’s interruption and that she cannot continue the session. Kayla’s family turns to glare at Gabie, who apologizes and quickly leaves the house with Drew.
Outside, Gabie tells Drew that she saw Kayla, alive but unwell. He thinks she’s fooling herself because she so badly wants Kayla to be alive. Drew thinks that death might be a preferable alternative to whatever Kayla must be going through at the hands of her captor if she is still alive.
This chapter ends with two pieces of ephemera. The first is the transcript of a 911 call. Cody Renfrew calls 911 to report a suicide. When asked whose, he indicates it is his own. A moment later, a gunshot is heard.
The second is an article in a Portland newspaper entitled “Suspected Killer Kills Self While on Phone with 911.” The article describes the life and death of Cody, revealing that at age 21 Cody was in recovery from substance use and undergoing treatment for a paranoid mental disorder. After the economic collapse, Cody lost his job and relapsed on meth. Police believe that Cody kidnapped Kayla to rob her, then killed her in the ensuing struggle. Cody shot himself shortly after speaking to Elizabeth Lamb. He left behind a note “begging for forgiveness” (184).
Chapter 35 Summary: “The Tenth Day: Gabie”
After learning of Cody’s suicide, Gabie has another nightmare about Kayla. When she wakes, she feels sick with the knowledge that Kayla is dead and so is her killer. She was naive to believe Kayla could still be alive. Gabie’s mother hugs her before she leaves for school, and for once Gabie lets her do it. Mrs. Klug asks if Gabie and Kayla were close. Gabie says that they were “just work friends” (186) and feels stupid for thinking she had a special connection to Kayla.
This chapter ends with the coroner’s report for Cody Renfrew, which lists his death as suicide by gunshot wound. The report mentions the note in his pocket, which reads “Please forgive me” (187).
Chapter 36 Summary: “The Thirteenth Day: Drew”
Drew and Gabie attend Kayla’s packed memorial service at a local church. Drew wonders how many attendees “feel like they own a little piece of Kayla” (189) because they have been following her case. He tries to make Gabie laugh, but ever since she found out about Cody’s suicide, she’s been acting distant.
The church has set up a message board with a picture of Kayla on it. Drew writes, “It should have been me” (191). Gabie says again that she is certain Kayla is alive. Suddenly, Sergeant Thayer appears and drags them out of the church. He warns Gabie to stop talking about Kayla like she’s alive, because her death is the only logical conclusion. He lists Cody’s perceived failures: Cody was addicted to meth, frequently committed petty thefts, and was once arrested for peering into his neighbors’ windows. He died by suicide and left a note asking for forgiveness. Kayla’s loved ones need to move on, and any hope of her still being alive keeps them trapped in the past. Thayer threatens to revoke Drew’s mother’s bail and send Drew to foster care if Gabie doesn’t comply.
This chapter ends with a transcript of a talk show called The Opal Show. Host Opal interviews Elizabeth Lamb. Lamb says that Kayla’s body is in the river but her spirit is present in the room. She claims that the night before Kayla’s parents hired her, she saw Kayla’s ghost standing at the foot of her bed. When she flew to Oregon and stood in the spot where Kayla was taken, she had a vision of Kayla’s kidnapper. He was a friendly-seeming man in a pickup truck who apologized for giving Kayla the wrong address, then grabbed her when she got out of the car to hand him his pizza. She claims she felt Kayla’s terror and trauma.
After reviewing the crime scene, Lamb had the police read her the names of all their suspects. When they read Cody’s name, she knew instantly that he was guilty. She drove to his house and had a brief conversation with him. The following day, Cody died by suicide. Opal concludes the interview by thanking Lamb for bringing closure to desperate families.
Chapter 37 Summary: “The Fourteenth Day: ‘John Robertson’”
Robertson builds a scale model of an amusement park while contemplating Kayla’s fate. He attended Kayla’s memorial the previous day and tried to hide his smile from the crowd. Because everyone now believes she is dead, he thinks, “So why should I disappoint them?” (197). He recalls seeing Cody Renfrew’s truck drive past him the night he kidnapped Kayla.
Robertson has been starving Kayla for two days to weaken her. He has learned from his previous murder and plans to kill Kayla via the “clean” method of strangulation, then throw her body into the Willamette River to “wash her clean” (198).
Chapter 38 Summary: “The Fourteenth Day: Kayla”
After two days of starvation, Kayla is certain she is going to die in Robertson’s basement room. Still, she has prepared for their eventual confrontation. She shattered the plate he brought her last meal on into sharp shards and hid them around the room along with one of the slats from her bed frame. As she waits for her captor to return, Kayla prays for her loved ones. She pictures her parents, her friends, and even Gabie and asks for the strength to kill either Robertson or, if it comes down to it, herself.
This chapter ends with Kayla’s daily horoscope, which tells her to resist impulsivity and act with caution.
Chapter 39 Summary: “The Fourteenth Day: Drew”
The day after Kayla’s memorial, the staff of Pete’s Pizza returns to work. As Drew is driving Gabie’s Mini Cooper back to the restaurant after a delivery, he’s tailed by another car. Drew pulls the Mini Cooper to the side of the road and waves for the driver to pass him, but instead the car plows into him, sending Drew crashing into the airbag. As he reorients himself, a man in a baseball cap emerges from the other car and asks, “Are you okay, miss?” (205). Drew recognizes the voice of Robertson and realizes that Kayla’s abductor has caught up to him.
Chapter 40 Summary: “The Fourteenth Day: ‘John Robertson’”
Robertson is driving back from work when he spots Gabie’s Mini Cooper ahead of him. He’s ecstatic that Gabie “has been offered up” to him (207). He decides to make her get out of the car willingly by running into her, but when Drew emerges from the car, he realizes that he has made yet another mistake. Now, he needs to get out of the situation and kill Kayla before Drew catches on.
Chapters 33-40 Analysis
In this section, the consequences of the Portland police’s misconduct culminate in Cody Renfrew’s suicide. Cody feels suicide is his only option because he’s been painted as a murderer in the eyes of his community. His death underscores the danger of letting unchecked biases influence character judgment. Biases can be dangerous on an interpersonal level, and when systems of power are entrenched with prejudice the results can be tragic.
The novel’s frequently switching perspectives and collage-style inserts make readers privy to knowledge that not all characters have. This knowledge in turn changes the interpretation of the narrative. To the police, the suicide note left by Cody, which reads “Please forgive me” (187), reads as an admission of guilt. They assume that he is begging forgiveness for murdering Kayla. Through Robertson’s chapters, the reader has already learned definitively that Cody is not Kayla’s abductor. His note is not an admission of guilt but a desperate plea for mercy from a community that turned its back on him.
In this section, the Willamette River emerges as a recurring motif associated with Kayla’s death. Since the beginning, the police have suspected that Kayla’s body is in the river. Their investigation has publicly centered around the river, so Elizabeth Lamb calls on this setting while “summoning” Kayla. In Robertson’s chapters, he indeed plans to dispose of her body in the river after he has killed her. By this point, even Kayla’s family is starting to believe she is dead, buying into the tragic missing-girl story. This conclusion, which is based on scant evidence, infuriates Gabie, who feels like she is one of the only people still fighting for Kayla. Gabie confronts Lamb, “her face two inches away from [Lamb’s]” (179) in a display of anger that contrasts with her shy-girl persona. Their confrontation illustrates that Gabie is starting to grow past her previous limitations.
Henry continues to show The Fallibility of Authority Figures through the actions of the police and Elizabeth Lamb, who display no remorse after Cody’s death. They drove an innocent man to suicide, but they wholeheartedly believe that they did the right thing and caught a killer. Thayer outright threatens to “make [Drew’s] life hell” (193) if Gabie continues to spread the idea that Kayla might be alive. The way that Cody’s image is posthumously smeared in the newspaper in Chapter 34 proves that he isn’t bluffing; the police department has the power to ruin lives and reputations.
Thayer’s escalation to full-blown corruption shatters the remainder of Gabie’s faith in the police department, driving home the lesson that adults in power aren’t always looking out for her best interests. His refusal to listen to Gabie also lowers Kayla’s chances of survival, since the police will not be looking for Kayla with the same degree of urgency now that they think she’s dead. This heightens the suspense of the novel as the rising action builds. In Chapter 40, Drew comes face-to-face with Robertson for the first time, signaling the start of the novel’s climax.
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